When will the Route 15 trolleys be back?

“Welcome to Route 15, service to Port Richmond via Girard Ave,” sounds the intercom as the trolley approaches the stop. You go up three steps, pay the fare (exact change only), and sit in the classic green seat.

Ding, ding, the trolley bell goes as it reaches the next stop. After listening to a couple of songs, reading a chapter, and breaking the Philly rule to not talk to strangers on public transportation, you get from West Philadelphia to Port Richmond in about an hour. You pull the yellow cord, and wait for the door to open, as fellow riders say in unison “Step down!”

Those were the days of Route 15, before it was temporarily replaced by bus rides, more than two years ago. At the time, the route was set to go through an update and come back by the end of 2021. But then came the pandemic, and problems with the supply chain, and things got delayed. Leaving many Route 15 lovers and trolley enthusiasts wondering when the service will resume.

Lauren Brooks, from North East Philadelphia, reached out to Curious Philly:

“What’s the status of the Fishtown-Port Richmond trolleys? When are they going to be back in service (instead of the replacement bus) and when will trolley tracks be done?”

Curious Philly is an Inquirer program where readers ask us questions, and we hunt down the answers. You can ask your own question at inquirer.com/askus/.

Route 15 cars have been around since before SEPTA even acquired Philadelphia’s public transportation system in 1968. The route has been around since the 1800s, as a path traveled by horse-drawn carriages. But it wasn’t until the Philadelphia Transit company implemented the Presidents’ Conference Committee (PCC) trolleys in the city, in the 1940s, that the line was used as we know it today.

Route 15 moved riders from West Philly to Port Richmond with six scheduled stops: Four along Girard Avenue (at 63rd, 40th, Broad, and Front Streets), one at Frankford and Delaware Avenues, and, one at Richmond and Westmoreland Streets. But riders could get off in between stops by request.

In January 2020, due to repairs on I-95, the trolley line could notcomplete its route, and SEPTA replaced Route 15 trolleys with buses. But it wasn’t just I-95 — the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDot) had scheduled road repairs near Richmond Street. “With all that construction, we would’ve had to bus detour anyhow,” says Jennifer Dougherty, SEPTA’s manager of long-range planning. SEPTA decided to use the service interruption to update the cars, as part of its modernization process. The route was put on hold, all six stops closed and temporarily replaced with 19 bus stops.

The line was supposed to return by 2021, but the pandemic hit and that didn’t happen.

The absence of the 15 has not gone unnoticed.

When The Inquirer asked readers for their opinion, many stories came in. For Philadelphians, the trolley is the place where they once lost their wallet and had someone return it; a mood changer on a hard day amid the holiday season; or the reason they moved to West Philly. Reader Michael Manfroni put it this way: It helps him “feel grounded in the urban fabric.”

As with many things in Philly, you can love something, but still wish it were better. People said they want the trolley cars and stations to be more accessible, fewer cars parked along the tracks, and more seats. Some of those fixes are part of the current plan.

But losing the route — even temporarily — seems to have affected many Philadelphians on a personal level. It’s now been a year since the trolley was supposed to come back. Some aren’t sure they’ll ever see the line again. For others, it’s now a major inconvenience. Lauren Brooks said she and her family to have to wake up earlier, walk twice as far to get to the bus stop, and commute for longer.

One person, Rafael Schneider, has embroidery art that marks “the (hopefully temporary) detrolleying of [Route] 15.”

So when is it coming back?

The fall of 2023 is the current plan. By then, trolley cars are expected to have mechanical upgrades that allow them to function better, according to Edward Carruthers, SEPTA’s rail equipment maintenance assistant chief officer. This, however, is only one part of the modernization process.

Even when the 15 comes back, buses will continue to be part of the route for a while. Although the 15 is expected to be back next year, Dougherty says that the extra vehicles and accessible stations are still a ways off. The entire process is expected to take a decade to complete. Without the added vehicles, Route 15 won’t be able to meet rider demand, and buses will still be needed.

So, why is it taking so long?

According to both Dougherty and Carruthers, the pandemic and subsequent global supply chain shortage added extra time to an already long and complex process. The type of trolleys that make up Route 15 — a type of what’s called PCC trolleys known as fully electric trolleys — were built in the 1930s; SEPTA acquired them when they took over the city’s public transportation in 1968. This is the third time the line has been replaced by buses to accommodate upgrade or development projects (the first was in 1992; the second in 2005).

According to Carruthers, there were “1,500 trolleys at one point serving this area (the city),” and many were retired throughout the decades. SEPTA chose to preserve 18 of the original trolleys, and restoring the vehicles is labor-intensive, says Carruthers.

On average, Carruthers estimates that it can take anywhere up to 500 hours to restore one car. “That’s not including the time it takes to get the parts, testing, the back-end engineering, and procurement support,” he adds. So far four cars are fully restored and four are at various stages of being upgraded, while the remaining 10 await their turn.

While Route 15 is set to be back in 2023, the purchase of new ADA-accessible vehicles, to make transportation more inclusive for Philadelphians with disabilities, is still in the works. (SEPTA started looking for a manufacturer in May 2022, but it won’t award a contract until early 2023.) According to Dougherty, it will take at least five more years for new vehicles to arrive.

If you love the trolley, it is coming back. You just may have to wait a while before it reaches its destination.

Thomas Fitzgerald contributed to this article.